Root Honor 10 and Install TWRP Recovery

The Honor 10 from Huawei is the Honor, or more accurately, cheaper version of the Huawei P20 and P20 Pro. The Honor 10 features the same Kirin 970 as the Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro and the new P20 and P20 Pro. As such, the specs sheet for the device is quite impressive as it is and performance shouldn’t be an issue. However, Huawei uses its own, heavily modified EMUI skin on top of Android. This generally means the performance can be improved upon with a custom ROM. There can be other reasons to root Honor 10 and install TWRP. Whatever your reasons are, here’s how you can do it.

Warning

Rooting your Honor 10 will void your warranty. Besides, flashing a custom recovery and using it to flash third-party mods can be risky. You may end up bricking your device. Even if you follow all the steps mentioned below correctly, there is still a chance that things may go south for you. Make sure you know what you’re doing and do everything at your own risk. DroidViews or anyone else cannot be held responsible under such circumstances.

Requirements

In order to flash a custom recovery, you will need an unlocked bootloader. If you haven’t yet unlocked the bootloader on your Honor 10, you can follow our guide which is applicable for unlocking the bootloader on any Huawei/Honor device. Hopefully, you’re not too late already.

You’ll also need to install the HiSuite from Huawei. This makes sure that the latest device drivers are installed on your PC.

Enable USB debugging and OEM Unlock on your Huawei Android device. To do this go to your Settings -> About -> SoftwareInformation -> More. Now tap on the Build Number 7-8 Times until you see a toast message “Developer option enabled”. Go back to Settings -> DeveloperOptions and enable OEM Unlock and USB Debugging.

Downloads

Download the unofficial TWRP image linked above. Rename the file as recovery.img and place it inside your adb folder. Also, download the Magisk zip and transfer it to your Honor 10’s internal storage.

How to install TWRP

Reboot your Honor 10 in fastboot mode. To do this, first power off the device completely. Once powered off, press and hold the Volume Down button and connect the device to your PC with a USB cable while holding the VolumeDown button. Let go of the button when fastboot mode pops up on the screen.

Open a command prompt window inside your ADB folder. To do this press and hold the Shift key and right-click in an empty space inside the adb folder. From the context menu, select Open command window here. Alternatively, you can type cmd in the address bar once you’re inside the adb folder and hit Enter to get the same results.

You can check whether your device is properly connected to your PC in the fastboot mode by entering this command in the command prompt window.

fastboot devices

It should return you your device’s serial number.

When you’re ready to flash the TWRP recovery image, enter the following command.

fastboot flash recovery_ramdisk recovery.img

Here, recovery.img is the name of the downloaded recovery image. In case you did not change the name, you’ll have to enter the original name of the recovery image file. For instance,

fastboot flash recovery_ramdisk twrp_bkl_0.7.img

When the flashing is complete, reboot the device with the following command then immediately unplug the USB cable and press and keep holding the VolumeUp button. This will boot your device in recovery mode. This is an important step because if you fail to immediately boot your device in TWRP recovery, it will be overwritten with the stock recovery again and you’ll then have to repeat the steps above.

fastboot reboot

Root Honor 10

When you’re in TWRP, you may be asked to enter your PIN or password in order to decrypt the device. On the main screen, select Install and then navigate to and select the downloaded Magisk zip.

Swipe at the bottom to flash the zip file.

Once complete, you’ll see a Reboot system button at the bottom. Tap on it and when your device reboots again it should be rooted.